Getting an EV charger into a condo, past the board

Establish what your parking stall actually is

This determines everything that follows. A stall can be part of your deeded unit, a limited common element assigned exclusively to you, a common element you have permission to use, or a rented space. Each carries different rights to alter it and different approval routes. Your governing documents and your deed say which, and it is worth reading them yourself rather than relying on what someone at the desk believes.

Watch for: Assuming "my space" means you own it. Assigned parking is very often a common element you have exclusive use of, not property you can modify at will. Getting this wrong is how installations get ordered removed after the fact.

Find out whether your state limits what the association can refuse

A number of states have enacted laws restricting how far a homeowners association or condo board can block an owner from installing charging in their own space, usually while allowing the association to impose reasonable conditions like insurance, standards and cost responsibility. The details differ enormously between the states that have them, and plenty of states have nothing at all.

Watch for: Relying on something you read about another state. Check whether your state has such a law and read what it actually says — your state's consumer or real-estate regulator, or an attorney who works with associations locally, is the authority. Do not walk into a board meeting quoting a statute that does not apply where you live.

Prepare the request the board can actually approve

Boards refuse vague requests and approve specific ones. A good submission names the equipment, shows where the circuit runs and how it is mounted, states who the licensed contractor is and that the work will be permitted and inspected, carries a certificate of insurance, and says explicitly that the owner pays for installation, electricity, maintenance, and any damage.

Watch for: Turning up with a charger brochure and a request for permission. The board's real anxieties are liability, precedent and cost to the association. Answer all three in writing before the meeting and you remove most of the reasons to say no.

Settle the metering question — this is the one that stalls projects

In most buildings the garage is on house power, so a charger plugged into it charges your car at every owner's expense. That is unacceptable to a board and rightly so. The usual answers are running a circuit from your own unit's meter where that is physically feasible, or fitting a submeter or a networked charger that records your consumption and bills it back to you.

Watch for: A networked charger being proposed without anyone mentioning the ongoing subscription that makes the billing work. It is a recurring cost, it is usually not in the installation quote, and someone has to own it for the life of the equipment. Establish who pays it and what happens if the vendor changes terms.

Plan for resident number ten, not just resident number one

The first charger in a building is easy and the tenth is impossible if the first nine were done ad hoc. Each individual run consumes capacity and physical space, and buildings routinely discover that a handful of unmanaged installs have used up the garage's entire allowance. The alternative is designing shared infrastructure once — a managed panel or backbone in the garage that future stalls tap into.

Watch for: An association approving installs one at a time with no capacity plan. It feels fair and it produces a first-come-first-served scramble that ends in an expensive service upgrade nobody budgeted for. Load management applies here exactly as it does in a house — see our load management page.

Sign a licence and indemnity agreement, and read it

Most boards will want a written agreement before work starts. Expect it to cover who owns the equipment, who insures it, who maintains it, what happens if the garage needs work and the charger is in the way, what happens when you sell, and who restores the stall if the equipment is removed. This is normal and it protects you as much as the association.

Watch for: An agreement that lets the association require removal at its discretion with no notice or compensation, or that leaves you liable for building electrical problems you had nothing to do with. Have it reviewed. This is the document that matters in five years, not the installation invoice.

Then, finally, the electrical work

Once ownership, approval, metering and the agreement are settled, the physical install is ordinary permitted work — a dedicated circuit to the stall, mounted equipment, an inspection. In a garage it is usually surface-run conduit, and it may need to cross common areas, which is itself something the board will want detailed in advance.

Watch for: Starting the electrical work before the paperwork is done because a contractor had availability. Work installed without approval can be ordered removed at your expense, and no state law protects an installation that skipped the process.